Pages

Sunday, September 11, 2005

Four years after 9/11/2001

I post this because it will be four years since that horrible event in New York City and the Pentagon. I'm very fortunate to have not lost anyone in that event but so many of us have. To them they have sympathy. I was far removed in Chicago but what happened affected me all the same. The hours and days immediately after the attacks went down was like the day my dad was in the hospital and there appeared to be no way he's leaving the hospital alive. In other words sad. But that isn't the half of it. At this time I will give my account of that day and my reactions. This event kind of changed my view of President Bush and his predecessor who I truly believe didn't take the threat of terrorism very seriously.

On 9/11/2001, this day wasn't unlike any other. I was about to go to class because in those days I still attended a community college in downtown Chicago. I was listening to the radio and they probably were talking about a plane crashing in the World Trade Center in New York but I wasn't paying much attention I thought it as an accident. At about this time my mother had me turn the TV.

I saw images of a hole in one of the buildings of the WTC. Honestly in my ignorance I had no idea that WTC was two buildings. So in any event I saw another fireball erupt from the building and it turns out that another plane hit WTC. I didn't figure this out until an instant replay on either NBC or ABC hit the airwaves. So both building were hit by aircraft. I was listening to coverage from the Mancow show and man they were besides themselves. I didn't think terrorism to be honest with you, in fact I wasn't sure what to think. BTW, this was a jumbo jet we were talking about that crashed into the buildings my hope was that these weren't passenger jets.

I was getting ready to head into downtown Chicago when I found out that the Pentagon was hit by an aircraft. At this moment I finally figured out someone was out to get us. This had become a scary day. I had finally left home after about 9:10 AM. At this rate I was already late but I went on and it appears everyone heard about this tragedy. It was written on my biology professor's face and I was waiting to hear an explosions or sirens. As I took the train downtown I was watching the Sears Tower to see if it were about to get hit. Nothing happened thank goodness, especially if who ever was doing this was targeting American landmarks.

I didn't find out that the WTC building collapsed until I went on the internet in the computer lab during my break in class. I would come home later to see the video of the collapse. Again very sad. Our professor let us out early and my mother said I should come back home. Classes weren't cancelled but this seemed like the perfect moment.

When I got home I saw that TV channels around the cable universe was following this tragedy. Some channels had normal programming, but some channels stopped broadcasting in light of the terrorism in NYC. Eventually they got back to business but the major networks didn't stop broadcasts of NYC until maybe a week or so later.

Honestly I was a little fatalistic because this was bewildering and I hope this allowed people to grow up because there are some genuinely evil individuals out there. They have no problem planning to murder ar at least have people murdered. Those 19 terrorists had to have been brainwashed into making these suicide flights. I just can't imagine an individual with a dose of common sense or sanity who would be so willing to go out in an inferno and take so many people with them.

All I can say is that today we are engaged in a conflict long overdue. We are taking on the terrorists and while there have been attacks that we couldn't prevent, there haven't been another attack similar to the one on that day in America since then. We are giving freedom and hope to those who probably would have become terrorists had we just allowed certain conditions to remain as they are. We have went to Afghanistan to take out the Taliban regime and freed the Afghans from the twisted religious utopia of the Taliban. And we went to Iraq who, while not involved in any way with the 9/11 attacks, to free those people from their dictator and give them freedom and hope.

In the process however the Bush administration have been savaged for their policies. America had been blamed for the deaths of their own people by her own citizens and there are who don't believe that military operations were the best way to go against terrorism. There are those who say we must talk to the terrorists and negotiate to give them what they want.

To this I'm not sure what to say. We didn't take Al Qaida seriously and look where it got us. We tried to reason with Saddam Hussein and look where it got us. Terrorists would be successful if they killed enough of us and got exactly what they think they wanted and the terrorism won't end because they want control of everything (that is my conclusion, BTW). Al-Qaeda may have wanted us out of the Middle East, however, they would have wanted to take over the world and make Islam the only religion. They hate freedom and you won't have a choice, so with this in mind why should I be content with that.